On World Poetry Day, we are honored to feature poems by Post-9/11 veterans and caregivers. These poems are raw emotions about the experience the authors have faced either while at war and/or life after they or their spouse have returned home.
“And then I cried”
By: Kevin Wallace, USAF (Ret)
In my chest there’s warped, black, blood-soaked soul
In my throat there’s hoarseness, inability to articulate truth
Each day I tell myself that I’ll tell myself each day
Every second we’re reminded sun burns skin
Water pollutes the body
Never, EVER cry
In my chest lies reasons to die, reasons to live, no energy to ask why
In my chest lungs shut down, depression sets in, I grow
I really don’t give a fuck!
In my fists there are cameras, on ready to freeze your suffering.
Cheese!
Climb through the window of my ribs, see a warped, black, blood-soaked soul
When you hear the shutter click, death sadly follows
Put your ear to my pulse
Do you hear my pulse wishing it could feel your ear?
They allow me no words, so watch as the venom dissolves my teeth
If you could taste the venom, it would taste like God’s sky
Like puffs of shit-flavored sarcasm with a deteriorating filter
That’s right! Drag your tongue across my eyes and into my brain
You’ll find the bullet riddled bodies of my brothers
I want to go back to the day I died and die one more day
I want to be
I want to be again
And then I cried
NIGHTMARES
By George R. Gutierrez
Screaming
Yelling
Crying
Begging
For a way out
Praying
Shouting
Believing
Knowing
It’s all not real
It’s not you
It’s not here
It’s not killing you
When you’re dreaming
Everything is real
Everything is imaginary
Just tell yourself that
Before you die
Your heart
Pounds
You lungs
Hurt
Your throat
Sore
From suppressed screams
You claw
You climb
You struggle
To leave
It’s all pretend
It’s all real
It’s all here
Trapping you inside
WAKE UP!
WAKE UP NOW!
Before you fall
Into darkness
They have you
It has you
You’re gone
Lost
Forever
It all makes sense
It’s all confusing
You close your eyes
Too bad they’re already shut
The heart in your chest
Threatens to escape
The lungs behind your ribs
Demand to explode
The mind behind your eyes
Knows the truth
It’s real
It’s here
You’re here
There’s no escape
No door
To open
No heels
To click
No magic word
To make it all go away
Everything is real
When it’s all an illusion
Everything is happening
When it’s never occurred at all
Everything here
Is you
You demand a way
You demand a hope
You demand a path
From this madness
Love,
I can help
Love,
I can save you
Love,
It’s so simple.
Open your eyes
Caregiver I don’t want to continue…
By: AKae ’16
Fighting for my life
Fighting with my family and friends
Fighting with myself
Fighting with these ghosts
Fighting to understand
Fighting to be understood
Fighting just to fight
To fight, period.
I’m tired.
So I’ll stop…
Fighting for my life
Fighting with my family and friends
Fighting with myself
Fighting with these ghosts
Fighting to understand
Fighting to be understood
Fighting just to fight
Fighting, period.
But, not like you think
I’ll start…
Living this life
Loving my family and friends
Learning my new self
Letting the ghosts rest
To understand
And it’ll be understood
Life is about living
Living; because I can
Caregiver: Lived
By C.Saffron
There is no need to tell us how lucky we are,
As if we are somehow, unaware of our good fortune.
We are reminded every holiday, as his ghosts,
are seated at the table with us,
sopping up his guilt and fear of joy, like gravy with bread
their presence unavoidable.
We try to ignore the specters of those who never returned,
but every morning they greet us like dismal sentinels upon our waking.
The stealthy shadows of injury and loss follow our every move
lurking around corners and popping out like jack in the box,
when we aren’t prepared for their lurid faces.
In every discussion, our burden dismissed, by well meaning souls,
who fail to see how we must always acknowledge our undeserved bounty and wrestle with grief.
The cliche reminders, that it could be worse,
as if, this is not enough to carry.
Who writes a requiem for the living, for those that travel through life with their wraith?
And who writes the eulogies to be spoken over the graveyards of our dreams,
as we attempt to cobble together an existence in the aftermath of destruction?
What allowances are made for mourning that is ever evolving?
Within his valorous heart there is the epic struggle, to allow himself to live,
And not become the eternal guest at a feast of the living damned.